Well, it was an interesting episode, but not one of their best. But maybe I'm just saying that because I know the issue so well. I'm sure all of us could think of something we would have liked to have seen them comment on, but then, we all hang out on a website called "gamepolitics."

I do wonder about the high expectations some people seem to have for the show. It's not called "Penn and Teller's Reasonable Counterpoints and Detailed Debate." It's called "Bullshit!" They aren't trying to make a case for their point of view. They're just punching holes in the moronic arguements and stances of the other side. If you're looking for a complex debate, then you're watching the wrong show, so of course you're going to be disappointed.

Yes but there have been episodes that have made really well done arguments and were presented rather well.

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

Kinda disapointed they didn't bring up Jack's crazy behavior that got him disbarred (though again, it's only a 30 minute show). I guess they figured his bullshit was so obvious, they wouldn't need to discredit him any further.

So congrats, Jack, we no longer need to bring up your sketchy past to make you look like a crazy motherfucker.

*Jack Thompson loves it when people argue with him. He whacks off to it!*

*Jack Thompson loves it when people argue with him. He whacks off to it! DON'T FEED THE TROLL!*

So Jack's house is not surprisingly ultra creepy. It looks like a higher tech version of my great grandmother's house 20 years ago. I'll bet it smells funny.

I like how he has PS3 and a 360 hooked up to separate TVs. You can tell he uses the PS3 for Blu-Ray since it's in his living room. The 360 on the other hand looks to be sloppily set up in a study area "for work".

Personally, I liked the episode for the message it sent. I feel they could have given the nay-sayers more time to present their point of view for a more balanced view of the debate (no matter how full of crap they are), but it did get the point across.

I'll say this, I enjoyed the show for what it was (micheal moore stlye) but what they did to that kid was really fucked up.

It is OBVIOUS they gave him NO training on how to handle the firearm, look at how he was holding it. He may never be able to shoot straight in his life now, not without a lot of training. He may have a flinch forever.

To be fair, the point of having him fire the rifle was to show that playing violent video games did not teach him to properly handle the weapon. They should have showed him how, but they did also have a trained professional not 5 feet away, a police officer and his mother nearby so it's not as if they 1) Forced him to do it and 2) took no safety precautions whatsoever.

Wow... you completly missed the point. they didn't train him because according to the anti-game crowd, he already did on video games. they were proving a point. that video games do not translate into real life... how did you miss that?

and they stress the fact that they didn't make him do it. they asked him, the guy with the gun asks him, his mom asked him... he made the choice to try it, and ultimatly saw it wasn't for him.

I like the football analogy, that was pretty good. I think the 'experiment' with the kid with interesting, if a little mean, as I would never let a 9-year old shoot a real gun, that's just ridiculous. I play paintball a lot, and very rarely have I seen kids that young on the field.

As an avid paintballer, I often laugh that the videogame industry is the target of all this, when paintball is arguably 100% more realistic. To put this in perspective in no way does paintball even come close to shooting a real gun, the inacuracy of a paintball gun and the way the game works does not reflect real shooting. So let's say playing paintball is only 25% as realistic as shooting a gun.

By that measure, playing videogames are only 0.25% as realistic as shooting a real gun. But it's probably even less than that, as paintball may be in the range of 200-500% more realistic then videogames.

I always thought that was odd that paintball doesn't seem to get as much flak. I'm glad they don't get any crap for being 'training grounds for killers' or whatever but still it baffles me why critics don't care about them.

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

the greatest argument they made in the show was when they were talking to the authors of grand theft childhood and said that if someone goes looking for a result, they can find any number of evidence to support it, but that doesnt correlate to true research. and that is the tactic that many a university and professors and doctors and lawyers employ. subject screening is a huge part in getting the "poll results" that they often tout, so of course they are going to find the batshit crazy kids that burn cats in ovens who also say they play grand theft auto.

He wasn't disbarred when they did the interview with him (although he was disbarred mere weeks after the interview, wonder why they didn't mention it).

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

Well, i would have to double check, but after Jack introduced himself i think Penn did describe him as an attorney in the past tense in the voice over. So they did acknowledge that he was no longer an acting attorney, but did not call attention to it... they may have felt that his disbarment was too irrelevant to the subject at hand to be worth bringing up and taking up more time... though it could also be possible Jack agreed to do the show on the grounds that they did not mention the trial that he was under, and just stuck to the games.

Though this does make me think, that when Jack mentioned that it was inevitable that anti game laws would come around, that it would have been a nice time to point out how many times such laws had failed to pass constitutional challenges and cost the the states in question hundreds of thousands of dollars... heh, thinking about it, that actually would have been a nice time to swipe at his credibility and mention he's been disbarred

I don't get that either, I mean they all failed partly due to there not being enough evidence that games cause kids to be violent. I think they either diddn't know this or were really stretched for time.

Tis moments like these I wish the show was 45 minutes long.

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

I'm a gamer, and I have shot a gun before. When I was a boy scout up at summer camp, they had both an Archery, Rifle, and Shotgun ranges for their respected merit badges. I've earned 2 of the 3 (Archery and Rifle only because shotgun's range didn't really open until much later). I enjoyed the 2 for the same reasons I enjoyed playing video games. The fun of it. My friends and I would compete to see who can score the best or at one point, who can earn the badge first.

I still enjoy shooting a gun from time to time, and still for the fun of it. I like going to the carnivals where they have those tiny ranges that you have to shoot the star out (Get so close every time).

ANYWAYS, this episode really did a number, though most has been dialed. one thing it does differently than anything is publicize it in a better lighting. You have all these news programs out there that publicize things that might not be true but it gets ratings and thats what matters to people in the business. Little boy survives cancer or Michael Jackson's funeral? A cure to some disease or some sort of "analyst" who thinks he has the causal link to a shooting without the solid evidence to prove it.

Not my favorite episode, but it did have the better ending of any other Bullshit episode. This kind of topic can't exactly be discussed because practical psychology is very complex, and this sort of topic is still very new. Defenders and attackers really can't have an official position yet because there is no ground to stand on besides the neutral one.

In fact, the whole episode could have been entirely based on what Harrison when through at the range, especially at the end. Or rather a larger point could have been made with the very end.

Anyways, that's how I feel about this episode. I could say more, but it would be a large rant.

Eh, i thought it could have been better... i mean, i thought they wasted a lot of time on the gun nut; aside from breaking down that triangle i didn't feel like he contributed much... sure he's got blatant double standards, but he's still just a lone nut; nothing about him makes him feel like he is a standard amongst the anti-game crowd; unlike the concerned guardian who is painfully ill informed, or Jack who uses the same flawed arguments that politicians and "experts" use... I'd would have rather seen Grossman (though his arguments might be a bit too similar to Jacks)

Dr.Byron would have also made an interesting expert to consult... if i recall her report could be pretty much summed up as "we just don't know", which in essence means there no evidence that games cause violence, but at the same time she recommends restriction "just in case"... it's kinda of a middle ground and the "just in case" mentality was something they addressed towards the end.

And while the grand theft childhood authors made a great addition, i would have liked to hear one more voice from our side... Henry Jenkins might have made a nice addition; if i recall he also once, in response to to anti-game arguments, also talked about the negative's of socially well excepted football (though i could be thinking of someone else... it was a long time ago)

but ofcourse, there's only so much you can cover in less than 30 minutes

Actually I was dismayed that they kept showing the on-line "Call of Duty" game where you do, kind of, get points toward "promotion". Inevitably that's going to reinforce the "points" idea, even if CoD is rather unique these days in that respect.

Except it isn't unique in that respect at all. All online shooters have a score system for kills, etc; and Battlefield has had ranking up since 2002. I'm sure there were games that did this even before then.

Well, that was an interesting episode, but surely only covers the basic, and not the entire issue, but I think they can keep talking about videogames polemic an entire season, and if they add Jack Thompson on the mix, wow, they would have to give him his own freaking show (hope Showtime executives are not reading this)...

Jack really looked pathetic in this episode. What he was thinking when he accepted to apear on BS? Penn really had reason when he said that there are people who believe they are bulletproof. Well, Jack surely thinks he is Superman mixed with Jesus.

Actually, he thinks he is Batman mixed with Jesus. Afterall, he did paste a picture of Batman onto his drivers licsence and fax it to people so they'd "know woh they were dealing with". Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up.

I thought it was alright, not for us since nothing there was anything new, except for Jack's distubing love of feeding fish. Shame they made no mention of Jack's antics though they exposed that other guy no one cares about for being a gun nut who likes making things blow up.

Well, Hitler loved his dog and other animals. So it's consistent in that sense.

I felt they did a pretty good job mocking Jack. I'd be interested to know if Penn and Teller and their producers got a flurry of angry and threatening emails for mocking and misrepresenting him. I'm sure they did. And they probably just told him to fuck off (considering that P&T seem to be familiar enough with him already).

Of course, I'm sure Jack will later say Penn & Teller are idiots. And as for Harrison, Jack will probably cover his ass by making the statement he's said elsewhere that video games alone won't "turn an angel into a demon," even though he's said plenty of other things that contradict that. He might even go as far as to say that his mother is "culpable," as he said of Brandon Crisp's parents in the Spawnkill interview.

I'd be interested to know if Penn and Teller and their producers got a flurry of angry and threatening emails for mocking and misrepresenting him.

I don't see how they misrepresented him. Mocked him? Sure. But misrepresented? I don't see it. They just filmed him, let him say his piece (stuff we here have heard before), and then called him on his...well, his bullshit.

Also I'm sure he had to sign some sort of aggrement or contract with them stating that he understood what the show was about, what he was getting himself into and waiving any rights to sue for him looking like a crackpot on television. Of course we all know that things like legally binding contracts, aggrements, court orders, etc. don't mean anything to JT. Just ask anyone over at Take-Two.

They're not going to care about random spamy press releases from Jack. They've gotten death threats over their conspiracy theories episodes.

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

That gun nut was the biggest hypocrite on that show. He hates guns in video games, but is a software engineer, and is crazy into collecting guns. So naturally you'd expect him to be okay with guns in games, but he isn't. Maybe he's holding some weird elitist view that two things which are great by themselves, suck when you combine them together. That would probably confuse the hell out of his kids (if he has any).

And I like how Penn & Teller literally broke apart his "triangle" theory.

I'm going to assume that he doesn't like gun in games because he thinks that games don't teach people to respect guns as tools not toys. Any sane gun owner will tell you that one of the most important things to remember when dealing with a weapon is to realize that it is a tool, not in any way shape or form a toy. You do not play with guns.

To an extent, I sympathize with his attitude. I don't share it but I can sympathize with it. I don't think games teach you to respect a gun as a tool. Then again, that isn't their purpose. You also shouldn't be pulling any firearms training from a game or a movie designed for entertainment purposes. Are games part of the problem, maybe, but their influence in negligible. If he is blaming games for shootings though he is a complete idiot.

There is nothing more frustrating than going to a range and two wannabe gangstas are playing with a crappy little hi-point or little revolver. Sweeping the range, holding it sideways, tossing it to their buddy while loaded, shooting while someone is down range retrieving a target and the range master has called a cease fire.

I mean, was the camera on a tripod or being held by someone? I'd like to know because while showing off his precious collection, he pointed a couple of the guns at the camera/person holding the camera.

And if there WAS someone holding the camera, I wouldn't call pointing a gun, loaded or unloaded, at someone all that responsible. Kids might have a resonable argument of "I didn't know it was loaded and I didn't know it would go off!". but someone who openly claims to be a "gun nut" would have, or SHOULD have, known better.

I was going to point out the same. For a guy who is a gun nut (and seriously, he had some fucking cannon-class automatic weapons on that table), and for a guy advocating against video game violence, he behaved like a complete moron when handling his gun collection.

RULE #1 -- treat every firearm as though it IS LOADED. This includes even if you have checked the weapon. Preferably, keep the weapon pointed down at the ground when handling it.

RULE #2 -- never point a firearm at another human being unless you have intention to do harm to them (see Rule #1).

RULE #3 -- if you do intend to do harm to someone, make sure it is only in self defense.

I'm going to assume that he doesn't like gun in games because he thinks that games don't teach people to respect guns as tools not toys. Any sane gun owner will tell you that one of the most important things to remember when dealing with a weapon is to realize that it is a tool, not in any way shape or form a toy. You do not play with guns.

That would have been fine if he wasn't shown holding his gun and making shooting noises like a little kid. That undermined his whole argument right there.

For the record, I've fired a .357 Magnum when I had a job as an armored car guard. My accuracy score was higher than anyone in my training class. But that wasn't from video games. It came from other places that taught me how to handle and use a real gun. Even then, I could not target with pinpoint accuracy like I can with a mouse. And then of course there's the matter of weight and recoil.

Like Cooney, I've also handled pyrotechnics (shot off a few mortars at the last 4th of July in fact), so I also know a thing or two about them as well. Yet I still also play and enjoy video games and find fake or simulated guns preferable to real ones. So with all that in mind, Cooney's just hypocritical douchebag.

Debates are likemerry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

Yeah but I still consider them B list celebrities at best (which isn't to say that I don't like Penn and Teller (I do like their show)), and yeah they've been on all major networks over those 30 years but I'm pretty sure Bullshit is their first TV show in the US (they had one in Britain that didn't last long).

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

Shout box

You're not permitted to post shouts.

Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm

james_fudge: Conster: the larger issue is that Ind. does not protect LGBTQ+ people under state law03/31/2015 - 12:11pm

PHX Corp: @MP I think it is confirmed(not an April Fools joke) http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/31/nintendo-direct-confirmed-for-wednesday-april-1st/03/31/2015 - 12:00pm

Conster: Apparently Pence intends to amend SB101 so denying service isn't allowed - without explicitly protecting LGBT+ and while still allowing the many other things you can get away with now if it's motivated by your religious beliefs.03/31/2015 - 11:53am

MaskedPixelante: http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/30/rumour-nintendo-direct-on-april-1st/ A supposed full leak of tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, so you can all laugh and laugh about how wrong it is.03/31/2015 - 11:35am

PHX Corp: http://kotaku.com/why-a-tekken-7-character-is-being-called-a-phoney-1694724959 Why a Tekken 7 Character Is Being Called a Phoney03/31/2015 - 10:08am